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12/28/2013

Percent of Adult Population with concealed handgun permits in Florida, with one county having about 18% of population with permits

The number of permits issued for Florida is from November 30, 2013. 1,045,551 Floridians have concealed handgun permits, that is almost 7 percent of Florida's adult population. Santa Rosa is the 30th largest of Florida's 67 counties. It has 17.7% of adults with permits. That makes committing a violent crime in Santa Rosa a lot more dangerous.

While I don't put much weight on purely cross-sectional data, Santa Rosa may be somewhat more populous than the median country, but it has the third lowest violent crime rate (157.7 per 100,000). That is much lower than the rate for the rest of the state. The average rate across counties was 418.3 and the median was 363.8. Indeed, its violent crime rate was very similar to the rates in the two less populous counties that that had lower violent crime rates.

Conversely, the counties with the most stand your ground cases are clustered in the southern part of the state.

WUFT reached a close approximation of the eligible population by calculating the population over 20 in each county (you must be 21 to obtain a permit, but neither the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services nor the Census Bureau report the over 21 population) and by subtracting each county’s inmates.

The result shows that Dixie County has the most permits with 15 percent of its eligible population owning a license, followed by Okaloosa County with 12.3 percent and Jackson County with 11.4 percent. . . .